The traffic accidents don't surprise me in the least. I've seen cops break every traffic law in the book regularly.

I've been tailgated by an officer on a number of occasions because I wasn't speeding fast enough on a single lane road for his taste. I've seen officers parking illegally, running red lights, illegal U-turns, weaving, hotdoging through traffic, cutting off other motorists, flipping on their lights to ignore red lights, and stop signs. The works.

Frankly I'm surprised more Rochester/Syracuse NY police don't end up in serious accidents.

I do not aspire to be great, or even good, I hope to suck a little less then last class.

The traffic accidents don't surprise me in the least. I've seen cops break every traffic law in the book regularly.

I've been tailgated by an officer on a number of occasions because I wasn't speeding fast enough on a single lane road for his taste. I've seen officers parking illegally, running red lights, illegal U-turns, weaving, hotdoging through traffic, cutting off other motorists, flipping on their lights to ignore red lights, and stop signs. The works.

Frankly I'm surprised more Rochester/Syracuse NY police don't end up in serious accidents.

While...yes...some (maybe even many) LEO's drive like assholes when they don't have to. There are MANY people who bitch about LEO driving when they have no clue where the cop may actually be going. Im sure that MANY people used to complain about my patrol driving when I was absolutely justified for making that U turn or turning my lights on to go through a red light (only to turn them off afterwards).

Unless you saw the copper do a U turn, cut off a car and blow a stop sign then pull into the coffee shop drive through you seldom know what the real reason for why he did it.

Again. As a LE supervisor I have chewed out my share of officers for the driving I caught them doing so Im not claiming 100% innocence. But Ive also told my share of complainers who called in that the officer was justified for driving the way he did too.

Last night, an LEO I trained with told us a story about something that happened here recently. The cops were called to a complaint in Pacific Beach, and when they confronted the owner at his house, the guy tossed a pitbull puppy at the officer as a distraction and punched him in the face. There's some crazy crap you guys gotta deal with, and I respect that you keep going out there and doing it.

I am from a law enforcement family and have been a reserve police officer (never been full time since I did the military as a career), so dont take this as being unsympathetic AT ALL. But how does the title of this thread hold water?

According to the Officer Down Memorial Page (http://www.odmp.org/search/year/2011?ref=sidebar) 158 officers were killed in the line of duty so far this year, that is exactly in line with the number killed by this point last year (more were killed by gunfire, less by vehicular accidents this year). Additionally in 1978, 216 officer were killed in the line of duty. In 1975 there were 242. How is this a record number?

I will admit the first 4 months of the year (2011) had a lot of deaths, but it has adjusted into the same cumulative numbers as 2010 over the course of the year.

Not seeing the statistics bearing out the assertion.

EDIT: Reread the original post, since it was made in March, I can see where it was coming from. Then I will just note that it has not born out over the course of the year.

Last edited by chemsoldier; 12/25/2011 1:53pm at .
Reason: tightening up argument based on missed initial information

Another interesting point to consider is that not only were LOD deaths at an all time high in the 1970s compared to today, there were in the vicinity of half as many LEOs in the united states at that time. So per capita, being a police officer in the 70s was even more dangerous than even the raw numbers of LOD deaths suggest.

I also suspect the number of LOD deaths in the decades before the 1980s were even higher. If you look at ODMP's numbers for those years their accident LOD deaths are RADICALLY lower than today. While I have not been able to confirm it yet, my suspicion is that modern records are kept very well in ODMP and updated as they happened. When departments gave ODMP back records of past officer deaths, their record keeping probably had a bias towards officers who died due to hostile parties (gunfire, fights, pursuit deaths, etc) and may not have included all the officers who died in "normal" auto accidents.